Albrecht Dürer: A Renaissance Journey in Print

Eighty-three prints by Albrecht Dürer, the Renaissance painter and graphic artist who transformed printmaking from a secondary medium meant for a popular audience into an art form of the highest importance, are on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Oct. 15, 2004-Jan. 9, 2005.

“Albrecht Dürer was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, and indeed all of Western civilization,” says Dr. Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Drawn from the Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which was founded in 1692 and is one of the oldest academies in Europe, the exhibition features all of Dürer’s most celebrated prints.

Among them is his famous Apocalypse woodcut series, first published in 1498. The series presents “a haunting vision of the Book of Revelation,” says Dr. Donald Schrader, consulting curator for VMFA.

“Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse print is one of the most famous images from the German Renaissance,” Schrader says. The entire Apocalypse series will be included in the exhibition.

Also on view are Dürer’s great woodcut series on the Passion of Christ and on the Life of Mary, both of which are admired particularly for their beautiful compositions and imaginative architectural fantasies, according to Schrader.

The exhibition also presents Dürer’s three most ambitious engravings: Knight, Death, and the Devil, St. Jerome in His Study, and the psychologically complex Melencolia. In addition, the exhibition contains sections devoted to Dürer’s personality, his stylistic development, his relationship with Renaissance thought, and the religious conflicts of the Reformation.

“Dürer’s work incorporated the highest level of artistic skill and the most complex and exalted intellectual content,” Schrader says. Dürer’s prints, which were sold throughout Europe during his lifetime, brought him international celebrity, and he was considered to be the most famous artist of his period.

Dürer’s endless imagination made his prints a significant source for other artists, who for centuries copied figures and other details from them, and his engagement with one of the most turbulent periods of Western history makes his prints an exceptional resource for the study of the thought and society of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

“The real miracle of Dürer’s prints, though, lies not in their role of proselytizing for the Renaissance. Their wonder rests in their astonishing beauty and complexity. They reveal the mind of a creator whose imagination and ingenuity seem endless,” Schrader says.

“The opportunity to see a large collection of Dürer’s prints in one space is rare and very special. Even the finest reproductions of his prints distort the scale, the clarity and delicacy of line, and the interplay between ink and paper that make them such marvelous objects.”

Dürer was the first northern European artist to understand the significance of Italian Renaissance art. He traveled twice to Italy, and he was not merely influenced personally by the Renaissance, but he also set himself the mission of bringing Renaissance ideas to other artists in the North. It was through prints, which were easily portable and thus could spread ideas farther and faster than painting, that Dürer undertook his mission.

Renaissance perspective drawing device from the exhibtion. Dürer (1471-1528) was the son of a Hungarian goldsmith who had settled in Nuremberg. Dürer’s godfather was Anton Koberger, a goldsmith who began the most important printing business in Renaissance Germany. Albrecht Dürer’s earliest training was with his father, but in 1486 he began to study painting. From 1490 until 1494 he traveled in Germany and probably in the Netherlands. He returned to Nuremberg, where his parents had arranged for him to marry. Soon, however, he departed for Italy to learn the artistic theory of the Renaissance.

On Dürer’s return to Nuremberg, he worked sporadically as a painter, but concentrated on designing woodcuts and perfecting the craft of engraving. He became the protégé of one of the great classical scholars of the time, Willibald Pirckheimer, who was an important influence for the remainder of Dürer’s life. In the autumn of 1498, Dürer published his first great series of prints, the spectacular Apocalypse woodcuts, which quickly elevated him to international prominence. From that time to the present, there has been an unflagging demand for Dürer’s prints.

Dürer continued as a painter and printmaker in Nuremberg in the early years of the 16th century. In 1505-07, he made a second visit to Venice, where he was received as a celebrity. On returning to Nuremberg, Dürer was awarded the most prestigious commissions for paintings from the leading rulers and richest merchants of the day. In 1512, the emperor Maximilian I visited Nuremberg and granted Dürer a life pension.

For subsequent generations, Dürer was a figure of central importance, especially in German culture, where he is seen as perhaps the most significant exponent of a German national identity before Goethe.

Albrecht Dürer: A Renaissance Journey in Print is organized by PONTE, Organisation für kulturelles Management GmbH, in cooperation with International Arts and Artists, Washington, D.C., from the Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (Kupferstichkabinett der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien), Vienna, Austria. The exhibition is showing exclusively at VMFA prior to a larger tour set for 2007.

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Albrecht Dürer: A Renaissance Journey in Print